Cars aren’t just cars anymore. They’re basically a living room on four wheels, chock full of the luxuries you might expect on your couch. Audi wants to take that a step further. At CES, they’re debuting an interactive virtual reality system for your backseat passengers—one that’s in tune with the motions of the car.
Back in November, Audi and Disney teamed up for a mysterious collaboration, aiming to implement a “new type of media” into your cars. Turns out that new media is VR, Autoblog.com confirms, and it’s going to be found in the E-Tron electric SUV. And you can test it out now at CES.
Audi and Disney’s Imagineering division are teaming up with a startup company called Holoride (which was co-founded by Audi) for a VR system that is supposed to be an integrated entertainment experience. The particular “experience” they’re debuting at CES is called “Marvel’s Avengers: Rocket’s Rescue Run.” In it, passengers team up with Rocket Raccoon and navigate an asteroid field. Their ship? The E-Tron, duh. Also included is a teaser for Avengers: Endgame.
The VR tech senses the movements of the car itself to create a real-time experience you can really feel. If the driver is cruising along a straight path, the VR user will be, too. If the driver makes a tight turn, the player makes a hard turn around their enemy.
The Holoride tech will be offered via an open platform that will be made available to all automakers and content developers once they’ve seamlessly integrated it into the e-tron.
You can expect VR glasses to be a standard part of the e-tron sometime within the next three years. After all, it can’t very well release a VR game without actually having games. The Avengers game is just a demo. Audi is looking to develop arcade games, underwater or space exploration games, and even educational trips that will allow passengers to dive into unknown territory.
This is pretty exciting stuff for the parent of every child who has ever complained about not having enough to do on a road trip.